


i know the story by heart

by neofightMe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/F, Game Over Timeline, Game Over Timeline Angst, Lots of Angst, Post-Canon, Rarepair, i don't think it gets any more rarepair than Tz/Rox out of everyone who got actual screentime, lots of mentions of deaths, this is pre much Roxy/Terezi dealing with GO timeline trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 19:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14220606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neofightMe/pseuds/neofightMe
Summary: Post-canon. Roxy and Terezi have a chat about what wasn’t.





	i know the story by heart

**Author's Note:**

> I finally add a canon-compliant fic into my repertoire of fics! Unbeta'd and pretty sloppy, if I'm honest, but I'm venting some IRL crap so have some self-indulgent rarepair I banged out in about 3 hours.

Jane throws a good party, she really does! Your Janey has always been fantastic like that- when she determines that shit needs to be Done, it Gets Done.

So your birthday bash is _smashing_. You are up to your eyeballs in food and drink and cake and everyone is invited. It really does beat the pathetic birthday party you tried to throw on LOPAN, with the misspelt banner, the disappointing attendance, and the teenage drama.

Did that happen in this timeline? Did the Roxy that originally belonged here do a better job than you? Questions plague your mind as you skirt the edges of the Lalonde X2 combo birthday extravaganza, staying far, far away from where everyone is gathered in the centre, and just kind of floating around the dip.

Okay, so you're kind of miserable. It's not their fault, truly! If it's anyone's fault it's probably yours. But having so many people around- actually, fuck it. You'll say it.

Having all your friends in one place freaks you out. Having your dancestors also here, happy, laughing, chatting- that makes it worse.

Janey is cutting you yet another slice of cake. You meet her eyes very carefully, and sometimes, when the light is at exactly the wrong angle her gorgeous baby blues glint red and you have to bury every urge you have to flinch.

That never happened to this Jane, you think. But your Janey’s ash-white visage lingers in your mind. She died in red, you watched it all from above and you can't get that image out of your head.

Jake hovers at the edge of the room. You can tell that he wants to be closer to the centre, where Karkat is furiously gesticulating about something, but he- he's reserved. He catches your eye and waves.

You wave back. He jerks back to avoid an incoming Dirk- and you see him, vividly, flinging himself with thoughtless heroism into the path of an oncoming sword.

Dirk is observing Jake. This is clear only to you, standing where you're standing, practically on the other side of the room. He’s going to pretend that he didn’t notice that and just continue that weird best friend-turned-boyfriends-turned-exes chicken.

You never did figure out what happened to your DiStri. John had told you that he was “stuck somewhere inside all those shitty glitches”, and you don’t know if that meant that you wouldn’t be able to get him out alive. It bug you, on many levels, whenever you think about it.

Regardless, you can't shake the feeling that you abandoned him in that other awful bad end of a timeline where everyone showed up and died immediately. You wonder if he's still alive over there. What's he doing? Putting up a good fight against the Condesce? Just floating around in shitty jpeg artifacts all by himself, unable to find anyone alive, unable to age and die?

Or, maybe, since the timeline never happened, he just… unexisted. The thought sends shivers down your spine.

You can't look Dirk in the eye. Good thing he’s got those shades.

“Roxy,” someone says. You come back to the present.

Rose. You briefly see the three round puncture wounds through her sternum and then you blink and it's gone.

“Oh, yeah, hi momdaughter!” You chirp. She rolls her eyes, mouth tugging up.

You smile and act like you never had to watch her die, like you didn't lean close to hear the last words she ever said and watch her eyes close forever and then patted goopey blue mud over her corpse.

“Happy birthday, ectobiological mother,” she says now, very much alive. She presses lump covered in neon pink gift wrap into your arms. It squishes under your fingers.

You blink at her, and then remember. “Oh, shit, Rose, wait up! It's your birthday too, so, so, you see, I got you something.”

“Oh? I do wonder what someone who can make anything with a thought will get me,” Rose says. The edge of her grin is teasing.

“And I totes can't wait to see what I got from someone who can see the perfect gift! But your gift is, ah. I had to leave your gift upstairs, mind coming along?”

“Only if you unwrap your present first, Roxy.”

“Shit yeah. Birthdays are for presents.”

You open the pink package to find an equally pink scarf. Hand knitted. You drape it around your neck and it's perfect- just the right length for you to loop it around your throat and have it sit perfectly, leaving just the right amount of drapey bit behind you. Heck, even the weight of it feels right, hanging off your shoulder to flutter behind you. You like these long, heavy scarves. It must have taken her _ages_ to make.

You're at a loss for words, so you throw your arms around Rose and hug her tight. You thank her profusely, breathlessly, when you remember how to speak.

“It's perfect,” you tell her. “How did you know? Wait, that’s right, you have Seer powers.”

“I didn’t use them.” The upward curve of her mouth is satisfied. Proud. “I didn’t need to. I grew up with you, Roxy. Mom.”

Your rush dies a little at that, but you recover. “Oh, uhhhh, your gift! Come 'ere. Up, up, with me.”

The two of your drift up the stairs, and you land in your room.

“Here, kitty,” you whisper. An adorable feline head with 5 eyes peeks out from behind some pillows.

Rose inhales sharply as her new kitten pads its way towards the two of you.

“I made her based on a tuxedo, y’know, but instead of white patches I made purple. It was a bit of a fun genetics engineering project, I-”

Rose hugs you, and drops to the ground, beckoning. You keep babbling.

“And, uh. As a weird side effect of my tinkering, she eats batteries, so I'd suggest keeping your electronics away from her mostly. As I found out the hard way.”

“Roxy,” Rose says to you, fiercely, “Without any sort of irony at all, I love her. I love you. Thank you so very much.”

She's blinking rapidly. Taking a few deep breaths, she says, “I haven't appreciated a single birthday gift from my mother unironically since she got me Jaspers. Thank you.”

Your Rosie, the one that got heroically forked through the heart, whispers in your ear.

“I loved her. You too, Mom. You too.”

Rose returns to the party with the newly christened Edgar Allen Paw. You stay in your room.

There was another Roxy in this timeline. This fact always comes to you, randomly. You feel strange and guilty, knowing that you are here, listening to Rose’s “I love you”s that are meant for her ears, and getting her birthday scarf, and a billion other tiny things that you stole from her by supplanting her in the grand scheme of things. You are- what are you?

You could ask John, but John didn't come. You can't imagine why. That was sarcasm, by the way.

You should probably head down, but you kind of don’t want to. You feel claustrophobic in a room full of people that you maybe-sort-of-saved but really, you didn’t do anything. You kind of just floated there, invisible, watching helplessly as they all got slaughtered. Then you waited on LOWAS for John to dump you, him and the rest of the planet into the new timeline and here you are.

Maybe it would have been better off for you to have just thrown a sad funeral for your dead teen mom and then stopped existing as John did his retconny thing.

Footsteps and something else clatters up the stairs and stop at your door.

You turn around as the door creaks open and _oh_ , it’s her.

It’s the troll that crash landed into your pity party, headbutted John, and imperiously ordered him to F1X TH1S. You think her name was Terezi.

Except. It’s not her, is it? Not the same her. That Terezi’s dead. John told you that she drew a chalk outline of her corpse and keeled over into that exact configuration _somehow_. Bullshit game powers may have been involved.

She doesn’t look nearly as pissed off as you remember her, probably because she’s not currently covered in teal blood and hasn’t just witness literally all of her friends die. Instead, she’s wearing a black shirt with a zodiac sign, like all the trolls favour, and a pair of bright red sunglasses.

“Blackberry Lalonde!” she exclaims, leaning on the doorframe. “What are you doing up here, removed from the festivities?”

“I’m not feeling up to it,” you tell her, hoping that she’d leave you alone. “Kind of got a case of the headaches. Um, what do you trolls call it? I’m got a panthrob. Or something.”

Terezi sniffs. “I appreciate your cultural sensitivity, but it’s headache. And you don’t actually have one.”

You frown up at her. “Okay, and you know that how?”

“I can smell it.”

Ooookay.

“Come downstairs,” she says, again. “It’s your wriggling- your birthday.”

“I’m not up to socialising right now,” you admit.

“Well, tough. I have been sent up to retrieve you for the greater good of the party, and a legislacerator never shirks her duty!”

Okay. Terezi is clearly nuts. And you really don’t want to go downstairs.

“I’ll bribe you,” you say, in a flash of inspiration. “Come in and close the door.”

“I cannot be bribed! A legislacerator is the long claw of law-”

“Nice rhyme.”

“- and there is no bribe you can possibly-”

“You sure?” you interrupt. “Come in here and find out what I have in mind.”

She stops talking, and just stands there, seemingly deep in thought. Then she complies.

She’s making noises of suspicion the entire way, but she’s coming in and shutting the door behind you.

“Alright,” she says. “This better be good.”

Focusing on the nothingness surrounding a bunch of footwear-related concepts, you do some weird voidey bullshit and steal the nothingness out of a pair of ruby-encrusted slippers which incidentally look just like Jade’s, but different enough that they don’t currently exist. Until you force them to exist by taking their nonexistence.

Terezi sniffs at you cautiously, trying to divine what the fuck you’re doing, and then gasps delightedly.

“Bribery accepted,” she says, snatching the shoes straight out of your hands. Wow, rude.

Although you’re not sure why you expected better of someone who stole the same pair of shoes off a dead girl in another universe.

You didn’t expect her to stick around. She ripped off her dusty sneakers(also red, but sparkly things are better always so you super get her) and started prancing around your room in her brand new ruby slippers but… she doesn’t leave.

She drops down to the floor next to you, and leans into your personal space. You lean out, discomforted, as she inhales greedily.

This… inspection finishes, and she rocks back to sit on her haunches. She looks thoughtful.

“You smell like you’re moping, blackberry Lalonde.”

“It’s Roxy.”

“Are you moping?”

She’s persistent. You ask, “Are you going to leave soon?”

You kind of regret it when her face shifts into some sort of neutral mask. “Do you want me to?”

For all that you’re not up to socialising(or rather, facing your friends from a different timeline), you kind of really don’t want to be alone, either.

You shake your head. Then you remember that she is blind, and you say, “no, you can stay if you want.”

A long silence passes. You are aware of her quiet, assured breaths. She doesn't seem as intimidating when she isn't gurgling every other word because of the blood in her lungs.

“Are you thinking about me?” she asks.

“Sorta.”

She grins, and it's disconcerting. “You're thinking about me. Her. Me, but not-me.”

Your guilty start gives you away, and you sigh.

“I was very angry, then,” she says, almost absentmindedly. “All my friends were dead, it was mostly my fault, and the other two people alive were just being sobby weenies.”

You… don't even know where to begin. “Your fault?”

Then you process the rest of it. “Hey! My mom died! My teen Mom who I've been wanting to meet my entire life! I think I had the right to be a sobby weenie.”

“You're still a sobby weenie now,” she points out. “Even though everyone's alive now, including your teen Mom.”

“I'm not sobby,” you say, defensively. Well, at least not today.

Hang on. The Terezi you met in the other timeline is dead. She’s super dead.

“How do you- what,” you say, weakly. “Who are you?”

She turns to you, and gives you a brilliant toothy grin. “I’m Terezi Pyrope.”

“I know. But you almost seemed like you were a different Terezi, like-”

 _Like you were there_ , you almost say.

Terezi reaches for you, and places a firm hand on your shoulder. She tilts her head forward in a way that’s probably supposed to emulate eye contact.

“Don’t tell anyone. I’m Terezi that had a glimpse into the head of every Terezi to ever exist. _I remember you_.”

Now that you watch her more closely, you think that you see it. You don’t interact much with Terezi on a day to day basis- she’s been mysteriously squirreled away in her hive more often than not, dropping hints about some S3CR3T PROJ3CT.

You suspect that she’s really doing something like John, and on the bad days, you. You’re hiding from your friends because you can’t face the ghost of the time that never happened.

Then you think more carefully about what she said, and whistle.

Damn. _Every_ Terezi?

“How many timelines do you remember, Terezi?”

Her lip curls downward. “All of them. In many ways, I am all the Terezis. All of them.”

At your incredulous look, she continues. “... But I block out most of them most of the time because it’s more important to be the Terezi that won.”

She raises her head, gesturing at the door. “It’s important for them.”

“Why do you remember, then?” you ask.

She shrugs. “Why can’t _you_ just act like the Roxy from this timeline? Why don’t you try to forget?”

She’s got you there.

You answer anyway.

“I think what happened is important. It sucked major balls, it was just incredibly shitty and horrible, but it was important.”

Terezi nods. She reaches over for your hand and you let her.

“I wanted to remember my mistakes, even though I never made them,” she says. “I want to own them. It’s horrible, but they’re all… me.”

You find yourself telling her everything.

You tell her about the sleepless nights. You tell her about always seeing your dead friends superimposed over the live ones. You tell her about how hard it is to stay away from drinking, but you’ve been down that dark hole and you’re never going back no matter how bad a place you’re at. You hope, anyway.

Terezi’s a great listener, squeezing your hand encouragingly whenever you get too choked up to keep going. She breathes deep and even and she tells you that it’s okay now whenever she catches something, which is always.

You tell her about feeling like an imposter that has stolen the place of the real Roxy, the Roxy that didn’t fuck up in a million ways, the Roxy that never had to see everyone die because of it. The Roxy that everyone thinks they’re talking to.

“How do you move past something that never happened?” you ask, and your nails are probably digging into her palm and hurting her something fierce but she doesn’t seem to care.

“It happened for you,” she says. “And if you doubt that, you can always ask me. I remember.”

The gap between the two of you has been narrowing over the course of the conversation, and you’re basically crying into her shirt at this point.

You’re no stranger to tears, of course. You’ve never been. She runs a gentle hand up and down your spine the whole time, like she’s trying to smooth down your ugly feelings and make you alright again.

It’s… great.

“I’m sorry, I’ve taken over this whole thing,” you laugh-sob. You’re at that point where you think you can stop crying now, even if your tear ducts haven’t really quite gotten the memo and your breathing is still all weird and gaspy. “You’ve probably seen more hardcore shit, right? All the Terezis. Those timelines probably suck more than the one I’m from.”

She’s quiet.

“Terezi?”

“I wanted to remember,” she finally says. She laughs, and her voice cracks, and maybe, probably her steady breathing has changed to those strained and tight breaths like she’s about to cry. Well shit, how do you handle this?

You put her arms around her and pat her head.

“I envy you, you know,” she says. “This conversation is not happening, got it?”

“Loud and clear, Terezi. Rezzers? No, I got it, Rezi-Pie.”

She snorts. “That’s an objectively stupid nickname, Lalonde.”

“Rezi-Pie,” you repeat, defiant. “This is definitely your Roxy-certified dumb nickname. Right, we’re definitely not having a conversation at all. My lips, zipped. Key is somewhere in the universe that went ka-plooey. This shit is inviolable.”

Terezi smiles, and she doesn’t look scary at all with that face. It’s so soft and so un-Terezi.

“I can’t open up usually, and I don’t know why it’s happening now,” she mumbles into your shoulder. “I can never say what’s on my mind.”

“I’ll bribe you,” you tell her, “to tell me everything.”

This gets you a wet chuckle. Score, RoLal. She snuffles. “I can’t possibly refuse.”

“I used to think that Vriska completed me,” she says, and she says it so quietly like a forbidden truth. It takes you a while to parse it all, and by the time it’s sunk in she starts speaking again.

“She’s so sure of everything, it drives me shithive maggots. Even when she’s wrong, I… I envy her. I never had that certainty in myself. I lost faith in my ability to know what is right a long time ago.”

You squeeze her a little. She inhales, and there’s a whole bunch of moisture rubbing against your cheek and dripping onto your new scarf. You shift a little and wind the scarf around the two of you.

You don’t really know what you’re doing.

“You know all the outcomes, though. That’s what you see, right?” you say. You feel like a dumbass when you say it out loud because Terezi starts laughing humourlessly. Ha. Ha.

“How is one timeline objectively better than another timeline? Do I get to decide who lives and who dies? Should I dictate that the timeline that happens should leave someone crippled instead of someone else dead?”

“Can everybody live?” you ask.

Terezi snorts. “A lot of my friends want to kill each other. Even when everyone lives, they’d be unhappy. Who am I to tell them to let it go?”

“So I want to remember. I want to remember everything I ever did wrong and know how I fixed things, or how I didn’t. I think that maybe one day, I can believe in myself again?”

“I believe in you,” you tell her. “You told us what to do and everything worked out.”

She sighs, another deep rattling breath. “Did it? Vriska’s gone. A bunch of people are still dead. We won the game, but I don’t really think that everything worked out. And anyway, what did I do anyway? Bleed on a fucking scarf and then keel over?”

She goes on, and there’s a sort of energy in her voice, driving her to keep going.

“I wish I felt sure. Maybe there’s a version of me out there that is sure enough to fix everything and not fuck it all up, but I checked and every Terezi that exists thinks like that, paranoid, indecisive.”

“Shh,” you say. “You’ve got nothing to be guilty about.”

She looks so incredibly tired. 

“I have everything to be guilty about, Lalonde. Every-me fucked up a lot.”

“We all fucked up. Will fuck up. Are presently fucking up. It’s like a Christmas Carol here with the ghosts of fuck up past, the ghost of fuck up present, and the ghost of fuck up future.”

“That was a transparent human cultural reference that I totally got,” Terezi says, deadpan.

“I’ll read it to you someday,” you tell her.“I read it when I was little. Littler. I don’t actually remember when. My house had this big bookcase of literary classics and behind all the fancy shit was like, really bad vampire novels. And then there was like a whole section that was just wizards because my mom somehow knew I’d love the shit out of wizards so she gave me Harry Potter, some really good Harry Potter fanfic printed out in case the servers got destroyed which they did, Lord of the Rings, but I didn’t really get into that as much because they spent too much time talking about elves having fuck off huge mansions instead of having Gandalf do awesome shit. Like be a wizard.”

“You explained nothing and then you dumped another expository boatload of human cultural references on me. I’m positively buried fuck deep in these human cultural references. All the human cultural references. All of them.”

You laugh, and reach over to ruffle her hair. You're feeling something, something tender, something warm. You look at her, take her in, from her sharp conical horns to the quick, lightning fast quirks of her brow and the square set of her jaw. Her gangly proportions, legs weirdly short, arms weirdly long, but somehow it's incredibly endearing. 

You want her around you. Not just for being a good listener. You liked this, having her with you.

“Stay with me tonight,” you say. “I’ve never had a birthday sleepover before. You probably never had a birthday sleepover before. We should totally have one, right now.”

Terezi inhales deeply, and says, “I’d like that.”

The two of you will make this the best birthday sleepover ever. You will simply be the best there is at sleepovers.

You pull her into bed, and listen to the party downstairs. You listen to Terezi’s breathing.

You feel like maybe you can finally move on. Like maybe you can finally try. 

**Author's Note:**

> pls comment and tell me if they should bang. I think they should, i just have no idea how to start writing it. also I've never written erotica ever so there's that.
> 
> Also hit me up on [tumblr](https://lalondeislandicedtea.tumblr.com/).


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